I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for supporting communication in a wireless communication network.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with a base station via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the base station. The UE may communicate directly with the base station if a communication channel between the UE and the base station has acceptable quality. The UE may also communicate indirectly with the base station via a relay station if the communication channel between the UE and the base station has poor quality. It may be desirable to control communication of the UE via the relay station such that good performance can be achieved for both the UE and the network.